


meet me sideways down the middle

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: Of Gearheaded Geeks and Alchemy Freaks (EdWin Week 2019) [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Arguing, EdWin Week 2019, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Prompt Fic, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 16:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18705961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: For EdWin Week 2019. Day 4: Nerds“I can’t believe I need to say this, Ed, but youcan’tput alchemy references in your wedding vows.”





	meet me sideways down the middle

Ed isn’t quite sure how it started, and how they devolved into this point.

A hand is thrown over Winry’s mouth, having slid down her face from where she slapped her palm over her forehead in exasperation. “I can’t believe I need to say this, Ed, but you  _can’t_  put alchemy references in your wedding vows.”

“I wasn’t gonna put—”

Her brow arches. It’s half from amusement, half from exasperation, and in part looks like she wants to throw her hands to the heavens and demand an explanation for why he’s like this.

“— _obscure_  references.” And okay, he  _realizes_  that it was incredibly stupid to try comparing love to the exothermic reaction between sulfur hydroxide mixed with ethyl acetate,  _shut up_.

“No,” she says, and crosses her arms, end of story.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. He knows how they ended up like this—when Winry chanced upon him working studiously upon something he refused to let her see, provoking her suspicion over the next few days until she, in a fit of boldness, just snatched the notes from his desk. About an hour after noticing they were missing, he found her in the kitchen with a hand pressed to her mouth, alternatively trying not to cuss out his stupidity and laughing her damn ass off. When he tried to stutter out a reasonable explanation, face burning, because all the sappy stuff he wrote down sounded  _so_  cringy aloud, she just slapped the papers onto his chest and declared that, for the sake of their wedding, some ground rules need to be laid out.

“Okay, fine!” He jabs a finger in her face, self-righteous and trying to retain his dignity. “But if I’m not writing alchemy vows, then  _you_  can’t write engineering vows!”

She blinks once, then frowns as though affronted and swaps his hand away. “I am not agreeing to that.”

“What do you mean you’re ‘not agreeing’?” he demands, throwing his arms up. “That’s not fair!”

The crown of her knuckles comes to rest upon the curve of her hip. “You proposed using alchemy, so I’m writing engineering vows.”

Indignation surges through him at the sheer injustice of it. “So my vows are gonna be bland as hell, and you get to make references to inner hydraulics and titanium thingamadrangles?”

“...‘thingamadrangles’.”

“ _You know what I mean_!”

“Ed, may I remind you that you made an incredibly dumb proposal to me at a train station— _without_  a ring, might I add?”

“I didn’t wanna look stupid in case you said ‘no’!” Which is a totally reasonable concern, thank you very much! Like, she did actually call him an idiot and in the space between that and her declaration about taking her whole life, he actually feared that she might flat out reject him, that he’d bared his heart to her (in perhaps the only way he knew how) and she was going to return it to him with an apologetic smile.

“Yeah, well, now when people ask how you proposed, I have to tell them you jabbed your finger in my face, spouted some alchemy gibberish, and didn’t even get down on one knee.” Okay, when you say it like _that_ , of _course_  it sounds bad. But it wasn’t that much a disaster—she said ‘yes’! “So you bet your ass I’m going to serenade you in mechanic talk.”

And then she arches a brow as though challenging him to protest.

Look. In his defense, the whole proposal thing was supposed to go  _very_  differently. He had written down this whole paragraph of vaguely flowery declarations—that launched itself right out of his head when the moment actually came, leaving only an empty space for him to fumble around in once he opened his mouth. So really—

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait.

“D-Did—” He feels the blood rushing hot and red to his face. “Did you  _seriously_  just call it ‘serenading’?”

Something like triumph marks the curve of her smirk. “Yep. Problem?”

“ _Yeah_ , I have a problem!” His face is on fire.

“Well, that’s too bad.” She jabs a finger at his chest, and he is struck with a vision of sudden horror as she leans forward to pin him with a gaze that could only be described as devious. He never knew she was actually capable of devious—but here he is, proven so fucking wrong that it’s actually vaguely unsettling. “‘Cause I’m going to stand at that altar, wear a dress so beautiful that even your dumb male brain will have to acknowledge just how gorgeous it is, and serenade you with engineering and mechanics in front of the  _entire congregation_. So you’re just going to have to find a way to deal with that.”

In that moment, he’s not sure which he objects to more—that crack about his “dumb male brain” or the absolutely  _mortifying_  picture she’s painting. Because she knows how he is around sappy stuff, knows that he’s not going to be able to stand there listening to her wax poetic (albeit, mechanic style) about love and romance without making a total fool of himself with some ill-timed comment or some stuttered approximation of vows in return or god, what if he just forgets everything again like with the proposal? And then he looks either like a jerk or dumbass or maybe both because she gave this moving, heartfelt speech and his idiot self is only going to be able to manage a flat “yeah, me too”.

...he is  _not_  emotionally constipated, shut  _up_.

Okay, his face is slowly roasting and it’s only a matter of time before he actually bursts a blood vessel, the way this is going. “God, Winry, no, _please_.”

“Or,” she goes on and oh god, he does  _not_  like that hint of mischief that dances in her cadence, “I  _could_  make a reference to internal combustion engines—”

“ _Ohmygodno_.”

“You didn’t even let me  _finish_ ,” she huffs, indignant.

Indignant! Like this whole thing  _isn’t_  an epic campaign to have him literally  _die_  of embarrassment. Like they don’t both know that “internal combustion” has a vaguely sexual undertone and hell, if she really does plan on saying that, they need to at least uninvite Mustang because fuck knows the smug bastard isn’t going to  _not_  say something about that, holy  _shit_.

“No—No automail or combustion engines or _fucking_ serenading!” He scarcely hear the sound of his voice over the roar of blood rushing to his ears. “Just— _no_!”

Her lips purse, but the annoyance is just another method of riling him up. “And why not?”

“ _You know why_!”

That has her turning away, tapping the side of her mouth with one finger in an almost contemplative manner. “Well... I guess I’d be willing to drop it— _if_.”

Oh god. Dread pools in his belly. “What?”

Then she whirls around with stars in her eyes. “ _If_  we honeymoon in Rush Valley.”

Briefly, Ed envisions staying in the dusty southern town, the heat rippling off the cliffs in a way only southern heat can—no humidity, at least from what he’s gathered of his limited visits to the quote-unquote “Holy Land of Automail”—and sunlight that glares unconditionally down on all without the slightest hint of consideration. The smell of motor oil faintly discernible in the air, the multitudes of colorful bodegas advertising various mechanics’ stalls, the shops displaying pre-assembled prosthetics available for purchase at marked-down prices. The very atmosphere choking with the promise of repair and innovation, the hum of mechanisms and the chatter of residence and bright, boisterous voices of casually happy citizens bonded together by being broken down and helping each other back on their feet.

It would certainly make Winry happy, being surrounded by all that machinery and the vigor of engineering rife in the very air itself, sinking into your lungs with each breathy inhale. The image of her eyes bright with enthusiasm, with a wide grin splitting her lovely face in two, does admittedly soften him a bit. The only real objection he can think to that is the way those other engineers pounce on potential customers like fucking hyenas, or would pester him almost constantly to take a look at his leg... which runs the risk of being publicly stripped down again.

But it’s only a minor inconvenience, if he’s being honest—at least, compared the light of her smile.

...oh  _wow_  that was cheesy as  _fuck_.

Okay, even if it is only a  _minor_  inconvenience—like hell he’s going to let her  _win_  their  _wedding plans_. He folds his arms with a huff. “Fine, but only if we can get married in a library.”

Her expression falters. “What.”

“Yeah. Central First Branch was rebuilt. It’s got big halls and these stained-glass windows that are all romantic and shit.” He and Al were invited to its grand reopening by Mustang—actually, it’s grand opening to the public, to alchemists who aren’t just employed by the government as weapons of war. Of course, you still needed to register with a special library card, but the sun cast rainbow tessellations across the carpets and ivory flights of stairs that wound up to the many levels of endless bookshelves and the ceiling above was adorned with a whimsical mural that looked like a dreamscape given shape. Sheska fucking  _wept_  when she saw it and Ed honestly couldn’t blame her because it was  _glorious_.

“Romantic and shit,” Winry repeats, blinking incredulously. Of course, she’s a gearhead and could probably never understand the sheer majesty that is an old library, or even a good bookstore. Her bliss is found hardware stores and amongst heavy machinery.

“We could get Mustang to pull the strings,” Ed says, and the idea of seeing the library decorated for the sole purpose of their wedding actually has his lip twitching. “Might as well have a  _reason_  to invite him, y’know?”

There’s an objection brimming on her tongue—against his disparaging comment about the bastard or his wanting them to be married in a place of intellectual import. But then she seems to mull it over, poke it and prod at it with her own personal tastes and discomforts, and must find it satisfactory after all.

But like him, she’s not going to concede. “Then I want a bouquet made of wrenches.”

“Well then I want to draw arrays on our invitations.”

“Then I want a dress made of automail.”

He blinks at her and tries very, very hard to smother a snort of laughter. “As someone who has spent four years lugging around two heavy steel limbs, and still has to deal with a solid steel leg, I dare you to go through with it so I can laugh when you have to haul your heavy ass down the aisle.”

She must realize the logic in this statement, because she frowns and spends a moment contemplating. “I get to decorate the dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses with automail parts, then.”

...well, that’s more likely to embarrass her than him. “Then I want to choose the decorations.”

“Oh,  _hell_  no!” she objects, more violently than is really necessary. “The theme of our wedding is  _not_  going to be flames and skulls and black leather!”

For the record, he was not thinking that. Even if it would be kind of cool. He knows she would never go for that.

Before he can say that, though, she adds, “You can do—I don’t know, alchemic flower arrangements. Or something.”

To which he scowls. “They don’t let  _food_  in libraries. What makes you think they’re gonna let flowers and pollen and junk in?”

Which makes her roll her eyes. Like  _he’s_  being the unreasonable one here.

“I wanna pick the venue for the reception,” he sniffs.

“God, Ed, you’re not going to pick something with décor that’s going to make me want to gouge my eyes out, are you?” And she says this like he’d actually do this, like he’d pick something extraordinarily tacky just to spite her.

Well. He would. But he’s not going to. He’s above that, see.

“I actually have a very tasteful restaurant in mind, thank you.”

Her eyes narrow skeptically. “Tasteful by who’s standards?”

Wow, she really doesn’t trust him. “Al said he liked it.”

Of course, that was when Al was still in the armor—Ed is pretty sure it’s still open, and pretty sure he could convince the owner to reserve it for the night. He’s a minor celebrity, after all. Plus, if he remembers right, the owner’s young son saw Ed as a superhero or some shit.

That has her relenting, albeit reluctantly, and Ed wonders if he should be offended that Winry trusts her future brother-in-law’s judgement over her fiancé’s. “...I _guess_  that would be okay.”

“So, we’ve decided?” Ed asks, a little incredulous. “No engineering vows?”

A frown makes itself known on her face. She jabs a finger at his chest. “And no alchemy vows.”

Ugh. Fine. He’s going to have to completely rewrite everything—which isn’t a total loss, because what he has at the moment is kind of garbage anyway, so.

“And no getting Al to help you,” she adds, turning away with a huff.

_That—!_

“Well then you can’t get Paninya to help you either!” he calls after her.

As she disappears around the corner, he catches her throwing her arms up in exasperation as she departs, but she doesn’t stop and pivot on her heel to level a protest his way. He takes that to mean he’s, in a rare twist of luck, somehow emerged victorious.

**Author's Note:**

> Look at these losers. Aren't they great?


End file.
